Nightwing and the Tumbler Come to Arkham Knight, Catwoman and Batman ’66 on the Way

As promised, there's a new update for Batman: Arkham Knight available today that brings the Tumbler from Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy to the video game. There'll be a pair of new race tracks based on those movies, too. You'll also be able to use the Tumbler on the streets of Gotham itself... provided you've already eliminated every single drone tank in the game. It's another of Arkham Knight's instances where it almost got something right. I mean, the Tumbler is pretty dang close to the Arkham Knight version of the Batmobile, but it still has these weird restrictions on how it can be used. The same was true of the Batman '89 Batmobile and will likely also be true of October's Batman '66 Batmobile, which shouldn't be confused with theBatman '66 Batmobile skin that was offered as a PlayStation 4 pre-order incentive.

Of course, weird restrictions has been the story of the Batman: Arkham Knight add-ons ever since they first started dropping. You could play as all the characters so far individually (Batgirl, Harley Quinn and Red Hood) in their specific stories, but none of them were accessible in the open world of Gotham's streets. At least, not without modding on a PC. The same will hold true for the Nightwing adventure, GCPD Lockdown. The first actual story content developed by Rocksteady (previous add-ons were from WB Montreal), there's a chance this little bit of Dick Grayson goodness will be the first DLC worth the price of admission. Hell, it might even actually last longer than 20 minutes. You know what still won't be coming? The ability to play as Nightwing throughout all of Gotham.

This is going to be the way it is, according to Rocksteady. In a forum post (via Kotaku), director Sefton Hill explained that Arkham Knight was built around Batman so completely, that putting other characters in his place would be impossible.

"Everything in the city is tailored to Batman – from the height of the buildings, to the width of the streets, to the lighting on the rooftops and everything in between. Other characters can’t grapple-and-glide or drive the Batmobile like Batman, so for them to feel authentic they would need to navigate in their own unique ways. And when that's done, even Gotham itself would need to be modified to get the best out of this new gameplay. Without a prohibitive amount of work, it just wouldn't be fun or feel authentic to what makes these incredible characters unique.

One place where Rocksteady will be letting players enjoy the game as other characters is in the revamped Challenge Maps. To this point, each challenge map has been specifically tailored towards one or a pair of specific characters. That will remain true through October, when a free game update opens up a character selection option for these maps. In the meantime, you'll be stuck playing as Batman, Catwoman, Nightwing and Robin on their own AR maps, even with the new pack of maps arriving next week alongside the Nightwing story missions.

As for October's paid content, Rocksteady teased the upcoming Batman '66 Batmobile, as well as some classic costume skins from that era. Additionally, there will be a story mission for Catwoman that takes place after Batman frees her from Riddler's clutches. No word on if you'll have to have completed every single last Riddler challenge in the game to play and enjoy it, but fingers crossed that won't be the case. The story stuff has done well to this point to be complementary without needing much from the main game. It would be a shame to have to 100% the main story to even enjoy a paid piece of content. Then again, given how the vehicles have worked, it wouldn't be that surprising either.

All of the content packs will be available for $1.99 each, or you can get the whole shebang for $39.99 in the season pass. The a la carte options might serve you better given the quality of the content to this point, but if you're an absolutely competionist, you've already committed to the whole thing, haven't you?